Sunday, March 23, 2008

Neighborhood of horrible restaurant names

When we moved to Woodlawn, our "up and coming" neighborhood a few years ago, there were no restaurants or stores or coffee shops in the immediate area. As I've written elsewhere, the Dekum Triangle are is now starting to develop - which we are very happy with. Here's a PDF of the official city plan, it's pretty exciting to see. The nice drawings are cropped to not show the horrible junkyard and gross industrial buildings. I wonder what's going to happen to those....?

Anyhoo, I hope the new businesses that come into the neighborhood will work a little harder on their business names than the 3 most recent arrivals. First there was Good Neighbor Pizzeria. Wow, could you have a more boring name? I'm no expert, but if I opened a place that sold triangular pizza slices in a neighborhood called the Dekum Triangle, I might have tried a little harder. Then there was the opening of Izogies, which I wrote about earlier. Good soul food, but kind of a tongue-twister of a name.

So yesterday I walked by the Village Ballroom because I had noticed the punk rock record store had moved out and someone else was moving in. Sure enough, a new restaurant is opening soon with the mindboggling name of Rumpslappers Broth and Beyond. Jesus Christ, people. They are moving from their current location on NE 42nd and all the reviews I've seen have been positive. AND they serve breakfast! I'm really looking forward to walking to breakfast this summer, but I am not looking forward to saying, "Meet me at Rumpslappers...."

1 comment:

Samuel John Klein said...

I'm with you on that, but the problem I have with "Rumpslappers Broth and Beyond" isn't so much the "Rumpslappers" part - it's the "and Beyond" part.

There's been business after business that have endeavored to show off as 'big picture' businesses who are willing to 'think' 'outside' 'the' 'box' by tacking an "and Beyond" or an "and More" on the end of the name.

Latterly, out here on the Heavy Eastside, out 122nd Way, there was a short-lived fast food dive off Division that called itself "(something-or-other) Burgers ... and More!".

This area is lousy with fast-food outlets and Chinese-food joints. How much more do we need?

Never mind that I'm going to be distracted pretty much permanently by wondering just what, philosphically, is beyond broth. Is it something that's more solid but still edible? Consommé? Aspic? What?